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THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 



A SERMON, 



BY REV. N. H. CHAMBERLAIN. 



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SERMonsr 



PREACHED IN 



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April 19tla, 1865 




REY. N. H. CHAMBERLAIN. 



NEW YORK. 

PUBLISHED BY G. W. CARLETON, 
413 Broadway. 

1865. 



Birmingham, April 19th. 1865. 
Reverend and Dear Sir : — 

The undersigned, members of your Parish, having listened 
with great interest to 3^our Sermon, delivered this day, on the 
death of President LIXCOLK, earnestly solicit of you a copy for 
publication. Deeming this request in keeping with the wishes of 
the great body of those who heard it. and hoping the same will 
be granted, we remain 

Sincerely yours, &c., 

A. BEARDSLEY, 
CHARLES A. STERLING, 
EDWIN WOOSTER, 
EDWARD LEWIS, 
WILLIAM M. HULL, 
FITCH SMITH, 
G. H. PECK, 
EDWARD N. SHELTON, 

To the Rev. N. H. CHAMBERLAIN, 

Rector of St. James. 



0, merciful God, and heavenly Father, who hast taught us in 
thy holy Word, that thou dost not willingly afflict or grieve the 
children of men ; Look with pity, we beseech thee, upon the sor- 
rows of thy servants, the family of the late President of the Uni- 
ted States, for whom our prayers are desired. In thy wisdom 
thou hast seen fit to visit them with trouble, and to bring distress 
upon them. Remember them, Lord, in mercy ; sanctify thy 
fatherly correction to them ; endue their souls with patience under 
their affliction, and with resignation to thy blessed wih; comfort 
them with a sense of thy goodness ; lift up thy countenance upon 
them, and give them peace; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. 
Amen. 



0, God, the King of Glory, who hast exalted Thine only Son, 
Jesus Christ, with great triumph, uuto Thy Kingdom in Heaven, 
we beseech Thee leave us not comfortless, but send to us Thine 
Holy Ghost, to comfort us and exalt us unto the same place whith- 
er our Savior, Clirist, is gone before, Who liveth and reigneth 
with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. 

Collect for the Sunday after Ascension day. 



SERMON. 



Let every soul be subject unto the higiieii powers. For 
there is no power but of god ; the powers that be are 
ordained of god. whosoever therefore resisteth the 
power, resisteth the ordinance of god, and they that re- 
SIST, SHALL RECEIVE TO THEMSELVES DAMNATION. — Epistle to the 

Romans, xiii. 1, 2. 

When the angel of death, who is also the angel of 
God, enters our homes, beloved, the Christian heart re- 
ceives his advent in silence ; both because words cannot 
express the agony, and silence is the most befitting 
fashion of souls that receive the solemn message. To- 
day it is no private griefs that call us together. It is a 
nation's sorrow, a nation's agony. The whole body 
politic is sick, the whole heart is faint. It is the mourn- 
ing of a nation for its Chief Magistrate, assassinated by 
the hand of treason. What words can express our loss, 
our sorrow. 

Behold the spectacle ! Here was a man, remarkable 
not only for his high office, but also for the solemn times 
in which he was called to fill that office ; a man sum- 
moned to the administration of affairs in troubled times, 
who so kept the middle path of justice, unswerved by 
1* 



friend or foe, that men of very diverse theories came, 
gradually, to see that here, somehow, was a providen- 
tial man, raised up to save the nation ; a man elected 
to be the pilot of the ship of State, who, in a storm as 
it were of blood, when, sometimes, the very stars of 
hope seemed lost, and every chart of guidance wanting, 
in silence held the helm with a hand so firm and steady, 
as to win plaudits from men on two continents : a man 
not over polished in the etiquette of Courts, perhaps, 
and yet with a certain inner loyalty to Liberty, to Eight 
and Justice, with a certain strong, unswerving honesty 
of life, that set him, by the natural justice of things, 
among royal hearted men. And he died by the assas- 
sin's hand ! The chief captain of a thousand victorious 
banners that could not shelter him, and the leader of a 
hundred legions of bronzed and steady soldiers Avho 
could not save him, lies stark and cold in the Capitol, 
and a great nation weeps for its foremost man in honor. 
This is, perhaps, under all the circumstances, the most 
solemn day of the Republic. 

" The powers that be are ordained of God." To this 
man belonged the headship of the Republic, both by di- 
vine and human right. He was your President. You, 
by the operation of that Constitution under which you 
live, had, of your own free will, lifted him to that great 
eminence. As your civic head, henceforth his honor be- 
came your own. As the President of your nation, what- 
ever affected him, pertained to you. The assassin who 
smote your President, smote also the nation's head and 



heart. Why was it that he died ? Was it because he 
had forfeited his life to violated law 1 He was preemi- 
nent as sustaining law. Was it because he was such a 
monster in cruelty or crime, that by the common consent 
of outraged human nature, he deserved to perish ? He 
was known to have been as tender-hearted as a woman ; 
sparing, to his gentle instincts, many evil doers, and mil- 
lions honored and trusted and reverenced him, the day 
he died. No ; it was because he was your President, 
and as the President, he had executed ihe people's will ; 
because, being elevated to the chair of Washington, he 
had dared, like Washington, to love and save his coun- 
try ; because he had kept his most solemn oath of office, 
and saw that the Republic received no detriment at his 
hands ; because he dared to stand between treason and 
its success, and withstood, by his official powers, the 
attempt to slay a nation and destroy a destiny ; because 
he had been loyal to the traditions, the hopes, the prom- 
ises, and the genius of a great republic. 

You have heard it said, perhaps, in times past, (the 
grave has wisely silenced all criticism of him whatever,) 
that he was responsible for the loss, the burden, and the 
agony, that for the last four years has crushed and 
smote the nation's heart. But how ? National policy 
is by the national vote ; and the nation voted to govern 
itself, and finally to save itself by war. He had but one 
vote among millions, and he obeyed the people when he 
prosecuted war. Was he a man of ])loGd, rejoicing in 
battle ? That cold, unmoving hand of our dead Presi- 



8 



dent, was \Yorn by holding out the olive breach of peace 
to the men who drew the sword against onr nationality, 
beseeching them to have mercy on themselves and yield 
No ; it is the men who smote against the flag ; the men 
who would destroy our nationality ; the men who would 
overturn, by insurrection, the very foundations of our 
liberties ; the men who repudiated our national tradi- 
tions and glories ; who insulted the graves of our mar- 
tyrs, and declared before the world that equal rights 
were miasma and delusion, and popular liberty a myth; 
who have made this nation blind with sorrow, and faint 
with the sacred offering of its reddest blood, that the 
Republic might live in peace. 

The conspirators against unit}' and nationality are re- 
sponsible, I say. They sowed the wind only to reap 
the whirlwind. The dragon's teeth which they scattered 
on the nation's soil, wounded the hands that strewed. 
They spoke to a loyal people with the voice of cannon, 
and cannon answered them ; they insulted loyal ears 
with beating drums, and they have grown familiar with 
the sound of muffled drums ; they marshalled legions, 
and were trampled down of legions ; they proffered, 
with proud hand, a bitter cup to the nation's lips, and 
they themselves drank the very dregs thereof. They 
appealed to God, and His decision was their defeat. 
They took the sword, and they perished by the sword. 
" The powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, 
therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of 



God; aud they that resist, shall receive to themselves 
damnation." 

In this Church to-day are the symbols of human 
power aud the divine power, in which all that can be 
rightly called authority exists. The flag of your coun- 
try is the symbol of " the powers that are ordained of 
God." The altar is the symbol of that God by whose 
will human law exists. The flag you have draped in 
mourning, for it is the emblem of an earthly sovereign- 
ty. The altar is never draped, because it is the em- 
blem of the immutable sovereignty of God. The Pres- 
ident dies ; the Christ of the altar never dies. Cabi- 
nets are changed; but the counsels of God never 
change. Nations mourn; but in Heaven they never 
mourn. The great captains of human destinies fall 
and fail ; but the Captain of our Salvation is always 
strong and sure. Here human passions and the assas- 
sin's dagger change our thanksgivings into funeral 
knells, and a nation is confused by a sudden and ghast- 
ly crime ; but in the Father land of our resurrection, 
the light is never shadowed, the song is never silenced, 
the love and peace of God can never fail. 

The nation's sorrow is uttered in its draped flags ; 
its solace and its strength are spoken in the undraped 
altar, that tells us of the all-sufficing and changeless 
power of God. 

I turn to consider for a moment, in the attempt to 
quicken our Christian patriotism in this, our nation's 
sorrow, which is meant to deepen our love for father- 



10 



land, to notice the meaning of that word nation, to the 
clear-sighted and Christian heart. A nationality is a 
sublime, a solemn, a sacred thing. It has its history, 
its prophecy, its destmy. It is always built upon so- 
lemn sacrifices; it is a compact always sealed with 
blood. It is a purchase made with loyal and self-sur- 
rendered lives. It is a patrimony watered with tears, 
preserved by faithful and patriotic labors, and steadied 
and maintained, sooner or later, by men who dare to be 
just, in the face of imminent perils, and citizens con- 
stant, at a great cost, to its interests and needs. 

Our nationality, like every other, is sacred to us, with 
the memory of dead heroes, and fragrant with the per- 
fume of pure, and stainless, and patriotic lives, who 
wrought and died for it. Our flag, as I have said, is 
the symbol of our nationality, and is sacred with its 
history. As a nation changes or advances, so does its 
flag, which wraps in its folds its story. A nation's 
shame or glory dims or brightens its flag. When, four 
years ago, our flag went down in an unequal conflict in 
Charleston harbor, it was an honored flag. It was our 
fathers' flag. Stout hands, moved of stout hearts, had 
carried it on battle fields and on the seas to victory. 
It was tlie flag of a free people, and it meant liberty. 
It sheltered its citizens in every clime, and it was sa- 
luted of many peoples, who saw in it the sovereignty 
of a free, a powerful nation. The last four years have 
encircled it with a new halo of glory. It hath en- 
dured a new baptism, wherein the smoke of battle 



11 



stained not and the tire consumed not. It carries in its 
folds the illustrious record of all who died for it, and of 
all who strove for it, that no star should fall from it, 
and no stain rest on it. Henceforth that flag is the 
legend which we bequeath to future generations, of that 
severe and_ solemn .struggle for the nation's life, in 
which we endured so much, and conquered, — not so 
much our enemies, our countrymen, — as our own right 
to live arid be a nation. Henceforth the red on it is 
deeper, for the crimson with which the blood of count- 
less martyrs has colored it ; the white on it is purer, 
for the pure sacrifice and self-surrender of those who 
went to their graves upbearing it ; the blue on it is 
heavenlier, for the great constancy of those dead heroes, 
whose memory becomes henceforth as the immutable 
upper skies that canopy our land, gleaming with stars 
wherein we read their glory and our duty. Yea, now 
behold a deeper crimson, a purer white, a heavenlier 
blue. A President's blood is on it, who died because 
he dared to hold it in the forefront of the nation. 
Henceforth it bears in its folds the memory of the Chief 
Magistrate of the Republic, who died because he had 
planned that the State should live. Henceforth, where- 
ever that flag is carried ; when it is canopied again, of 
battle waged for human liberties, throughout the ages ; 
whe;ever our navies bear it in under the frowning bat- 
tlements of kingly realms, and in the presence of the 
silent or loud-mouthed cannon of ancient citadels, sta- 
tioned on any sea; under all skies, in the immortal 



12 



constellation of its stars that represent its martyrs, 
shall be blazoned forth the fame of our dead chief, who 
died in his great office, sealing his record with his blood, 
that the one flag, cleansed of all shadow of unequal 
rights for any race or color, may be the flag of one 
nation, of one privilege, of one justice, of one liberty 
for all men, forevermore. 

Remember, then, the text, *' The powers that be are 
ordained of God." So far I have spoken of those mat- 
ters which naturally suggest themselves in these unu- 
sual and solemn furnishings of our Church. I address 
myself to the re-kindling in your hearts of that Chris- 
tian patriotism which these solemn services encourage, 
when I invite your notice to the fact of the intimate 
relations and the mutual offices which exist between 
Church and State. It is the quality of high office, that 
the man who fills it cannot even die without giving a 
very positive direction and influence to the minds of 
those over whom he is called to preside. Certain am 
I that no President of this Republic has ever died, who 
by the manner of his death has ever taught us all such 
impressive and solemn lessons as those of this present 
hour. And the lessons which he teaches are in behalf 
of liberty, law and nationality. I beg you to observe, 
then, the relation between Church and State in the Re- 
public. For that they are somehow bound together, is 
proved from this unusual spectacle around me. If not, 
tell me why, as Churchmen, you have hung these flags 
in this place, which you have consecrated to the wor- 



13 



ship of Almighty God, through Jesus Christ, His Son, 
and in the very presence of so many memorials of the 
Lord's Cross and Passion ? Have you not placed these 
symbols of the State so near the altar because, some- 
how, these two have intimate relations ? The question 
has but one answer. They exist together, 

The duty of the Church to the State is, first of all, 
obedience in things temporal. The correlated duty of 
the State is protection. The Church is a spiritual 
kingdom. She cannot assume to herself the power of 
the sword, and is strong only in her humilities, her char- 
ities and life of the Holy Ghost. But then she nur- 
tures in the heart of the State that spiritual life and 
sense of holy things, without which states perish. Her 
contributions to the public weal are in things spiritual 
and eternal. Pursuing her holy avocations in godly 
quietness, her first instinct is that of submission to civil 
authority. Obedient, she asks only to be protected in 
her inoffensive and blessed avocations. She shelters 
herself beneath the strong arm of public authority, and 
in return for her shelter, as her bounden duty, she 
teaches reverence, obedience, submission to " the pow- 
ers that be." This she is taught to do, by the whole 
strain and tenor of the teaching of Her blessed Lord. 
She hears Him say, " Render unto Ceesar the things 
that be Csesar's, and unto God the things that be 
God's," and renders them accordingly. She finds the 
same lesson in those holy Scriptures, whose teaching 
she obeys. She finds the same practice in all the ages 
2 



14 



of an uncorrupt and apostolic faith. She hath suffered 
great wrongs, during long, weary days of dishonor 
and reviling, at the hands of unjust rulers, and refused 
either to rebel or disobey. She hath once, at least, 
in this Republic, periled her very existence, by her 
persistency in obeying constituted and established law. 
The very genius of the Church is that of subordination 
and obedience. Her ancient hierarchy and order, wherein 
every man, having his own rights in his own place, is 
yet under fixed law and rule, begets the same sentiment 
of submission. Most emphatically does she teach obe- 
dience and reverence to the civil magistrate. Twice 
a day, whenever her daily service is celebrated, every 
priest is bound to offer before the people a prayer for 
" the President of the United States and all others in 
authority." In her Litany she prays for " all Christian 
rulers and magistrates," and to be delivered from " all 
sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion." Throughout 
her Liturgy and in her occasional services, she incul- 
cates obedience to " the powers that be." lier utter- 
ance is no uncertain sound. Avoiding, on principle, and 
from a fixed policy transmitted to her from primitive 
time, all confusion, she shuns all intermixing of poli- 
tics or temporalities with her sacred offices ; but as a 
matter above and beyond all such things, she teaches 
as an integral part of her religion, patriotism, loyalty 
and obedience to constituted authority. If you allege, 
in answer, that her children have sometimes been dis- 
loyal, I answer, the disciples have sometimes betrayed 



15 



or forsook their Master. Their sin makes against them- 
selves. It is nothing against the holy things which 
they forsake. 

On this day of our solemn sorrow, the Church, find- 
ing her words enforced by a great calamity, speaks to 
you both as citizens and as Churchmen, and the lesson 
taught is this : She says, "In a republic, majorities 
must rule, and minorities submit. Eepublicauism is 
only possible so. When any man is elected to the 
Presidency, he becomes your President, — the President 
of every citizen of the Republic. Then whatever hon- 
ors him, honors you ; whatever injures him, injures you. 
The man elected may not be a great man, or a good 
man, but when elected, he becomes the chosen civic 
head of many great and good men, and of the whole 
Republic. Honor him for his office. It is not your 
charity, it is your duty." The Church says, moreover, 
to her children, " You are to speak reverently of the 
President; not bitterly, nor passionately, nor uncharita- 
bly, but reverently, if you speak at all." To-day, rev- 
erence for our dead President is not difficult, for he 
hath won it, or wrested it from millions of hearts. But 
the lesson which the Church teaches to-day, she will 
teach in all future time. " Reverence the powers that 
be; obey, be loyal, be patriotic, and deal very reverent- 
ly with whoever may chance to be the Chief Magis- 
trate of the Republic, in all coming time." I do not 
ask how far any of us have done this. But remember 
this in the time to come, when in the altering fortunes 



16 



of parties, some man may chance to be your President, 
whom it is not the fashion to admire. The Church 
knows no party but her own blessed mission and salva- 
tion, through Jesus Christ. Her words cannot alter. 
"Honor the President and all civil magistrates and 
rulers." ' " The powers that be are ordained of God." 

I turn now from the more general to the special les- 
sons of the hour, to notice a few of the many that sug- 
gest themselves. In the first place, we observe that 
all our griefs come more or less directly from sin. True, 
this is a most ghastly sin and crime against a nation, 
and a people suffer ; but whether in the race or the indi- 
vidual, sin in all its accidents and consequences is sharp, 
bitter, biting. It has about it the sting of the serpent 
and the faintness and bewilderment of a most active 
poison. Great crimes like this involve innocence with 
guilt in the suffering which they entail. When Ctesar 
died beneath the daggers of the conspirators, the Tiber 
ran red therefor with noble blood, and the Empire felt 
to its utmost bounds the sorrow that followed the stroke 
of the assassins. The blow that struck down Henry 
IV. of France, reechoed through all his realm, in the 
cry of Rachaels weeping for their children whom it had 
thrust to the fore-front of a most cruel civil war. 
When William of Orange perished by an assassin, with 
him died the hope of Spanish rule in the Netherlands, 
and many a proud house of Spain had cause to mourn 
for Spanish soldiers whom that blow slew in unsuccess- 
ful warfare. Blood, somehow, sheds blood. The as- 



17 



sassin's knife reaches deeper than he knows. The blow 
that smote the President dug graves and built gallows. 
The punishment of the criminal, whose only import- 
ance arises from the magnitude of his infamy, is certain. 
They tell us that as yet there has been no arrest. But 
how shall he escape ? Shall he hide himself among our 
millions ? The virtuous wrath of a great people will 
hunt iiim to his doom, Shall he seek asylum in the 
great cities of the old world ? European potentates are 
never enamoured of assassination, and every court is 
bound, in self preservation, to give him up. Shall he fly 
to the isles of the sea for refuge? Our navies float in 
every water, and the vigilance of justice inspects every 
land. Shall he hide his infamy among barbaric and 
savage races of unknown tongues? His guilt is a 
tongue that daily makes itself intelligible before the 
throne of God. Shall he cower in the caverns of 
the eartli ? Their portals are very broad to the 
messengers of retribution. Shall he call upon the 
mountains to cover him ? The mountains cannot cover. 
Will he turn suicide ? Whether it be by steel or poison 
or any element, they only unlock the doors of his most 
miserable doom. Shall he trust himself to the fire .'' 
The very fire will surrender him to the bar of the ever- 
lasting justice, and declare who it was that died by it. 
Shall he cast himself into the depths of the sea, praying 
the high waves to cover him, and its most shadowy and 
silent gulfs to hide him ? The very sea gives up its 
dead to God ; and there is no escape. 

2* 



18 



I have spoken of a great criminal. All sin is crime, 
and hath no refuge but in penitence and the One Atone- 
ment of the Redeemer. 

You will observe in the next place, the uselessness of 
the monstrous crime that hath covered our land with 
mourning. It is the testimony of all history, that as- 
sassination hath never outmatched a true cause or bro- 
ken a nation's will whose heart was vital with a great 
aspiration. The aspiration of this nation was and is for 
liberty and unity. Contrawise, examples teach how 
assassination recoils with untold miseries upon the cause 
in behalf of which it was invoked. The nature of the 
moral government of God necessitates the history which 
proves the statement. Were a just cause in the keep- 
ing of the assassin's pistol, matter would have wrested 
the supremacy from God. Were the Right subject to 
Brutus' dagger, it would be unworthy to wear a kinglier 
than Csesar's crown. The feet of the legions that march 
against Liberty only trample down the earth firmer on 
which her pedestal is reared. 

What hath this assassin of our Chief Magistrate ac- 
complished ? How has he aided those whom he aspired 
to vmdicate ? He has struck down their most powerful 
and generous friend. How has he improved theu* for- 
tunes 1 A great nation this day bows itself in agony, 
blind, bewildered, astounded by the cruel blow, but, 
taking to its heart an oath, shaped in the very audience 
chamber of the illustrious dead, that henceforth, in all 
matters pertaining to its own existence, simple justice 



19 



shall be clone, though the very heavens fall. What 
hath he wrought upon the nation whose chief he slew ? 
Have the wheels of the public administration been block- 
ed 1 They move on without a jar. Has the hand that 
held the sword been palsied ? It holds the sword more 
firmly. Has the fabric of our liberties been rudely 
shaken ? They are henceforth cemented more firmly in 
the blood of the President of the Republic. 

Here hath been a State crime, indeed. Remember, 
all sin is useless ! 

But after all, I suppose, beloved, that in the hearts of 
the millions who assemble themselves this day in sol- 
emn commemorative services in honor of our dead Pres- 
ident, the foremost thought is of the loss which this na- 
tion has sustained. In the truest sense, in the universe 
of God, things are not lost, but changed. Things be- 
come invisible, not seldom grow to be more powerful. 
The dew-drop, glittering on the spring violet, dried up 
of the thirsty sun, is lost to sight only, to be lifted in 
the upper air, to deepen the blue of the spring heavens. 
The snow-flake fallen upon the river is lost to sight 
only to become the crimson and gold of the lifted clouds, 
or to fill up the glory of the sunset skies. The flower 
that you trample under foot, has perished only to breathe 
out its fragrance to purify the air by which we live. The 
sacrifices offered for a thousand years under the golden 
roof of Solomon's temple, disappeared indeed, in smoke 
and vapor, from the vision of the priest who offered 
them, but somewhere the world still holds every parti- 



20 



cle thereof. In a subtle but holy ProYidence, the qual- 
ity of human sacrifice is to quicken life. A great offer- 
ing of blood, for instance, made in behalf of a right 
cause, bears in its red hand a great blessing. The fra- 
grance of an heroic life, perished, as we say, under the 
lictor's axe or the assassin's dagger, for Liberty or 
Right, purifies and vitalizes, henceforth, the life of na- 
tions aud individuals. The blood of the martyrs of the 
Church has been the whiteness of her robes and the glory 
of her Crown. The life of the President, who died in 
the nation's Capitol, l^ecomes, henceforth, an integral 
part of the life of the Republic. In Him the accidents 
of the visible flesh arc chauged to the permanence of 
an invisible and heroic spirit. Martyrdom for duty lifts 
a man out of days, to become a citizen of the ages. 
Had not this man been great, (as in many ways great 
he was,) the fashion of his dying would have elevated 
him amongst the most venerated sons of the Republic. 
Assassination hath embalmed his fame and memory 
with his own blood. 

I point you to the same truth concerning the martyrs 
of a foui* years war, of whom our dead President hath 
now become the chief. I think of them at rest ; some 
laid in sudden graves, with the requiem of the cannon's 
roar or of muffled drums, and some with gentle shroud- 
ing, by kindred hands, among their kindred dead; of 
those who went down in the red tide of battle, in the 
hot strife of arms, in sudden overthrow ; of those who 
died in prisons, or wasted away with pale famine, or 



21 



perished with disease or wounds, — all fallen for Father- 
land. These cannot perish. They live in the new life 
of the Republic, which God hath granted us in answer 
to suchbounden, such precious sacrifices. To Christian 
faith the martyrs never die. They tell us how the peas- 
ants who live on the plains of Marathon, think they still 
hear, on stormy nights, the onset of Mardonius and his 
fleshless legions, and the cry of Grecian valor, though 
it be two thousand years since the Hellenic race tram- 
pled down, in blood, the proud banners of Medes and 
Persians, that Hellenic nationality might live. Hence- 
forth the flag of our Republic hath a new championship 
and retinue. Hereafter, whereever that flag is lifted in 
red battle in behalf of justice, of nationality, of liberty, 
the invisible spirits of those ascended from beneath its 
folds, in a chariot of battle-flame, to an immortal honor, 
gather about it, to strengthen the arms of those who 
strike for it, and to steady the hearts that honor it, and 
follow it. 

It was, you know, on that most strange and solemn 
Easter Sunday, which the American Church will long re- 
member, with the Easter flowers to speak of the new life 
through the risen Christ, and our own agony to remind us 
how all flesh is " like the grass," that our pious thought 
and wish for our dead President was, that when he went 
out from under all his burdens, having laid aside his high 
ofiicc, humbly trusting to the one Atonement once made 
for him and all men, freed forever from the assassin's 
blow and the traitor's contumely, in a land where malice 
and foul passions come not, his soul might rest in peace. 



22 



It may be a very human thought, which somehow 
connects the passage of onr President into the spirit- 
land with that solemn story of the prophet, who tells 
us that when the king of Babylon came amongst the 
company of royal spirits, the kings of the whole earth 
rose up from their shadowy thrones, and met him with 
solemn greetings. I think of our dead Chief; of his 
patience, his endurance, his great burdens, his great 
achievements, his most solemn and tragic death for Fa- 
therland; and, somehow, I seem to see, as he enters the 
shadowy land of the Hereafter, the dead heroes and 
patriots of the Eepublic, — foremost among them the 
great Captain of our war of Independence, whose ashes 
they laid in rest by the blue waters of that Potomac so 
often reddened now of patriots' blood, — rising up and 
coming forth to greet our Chief, as their peer and broth- 
er ; as one who, for the Republic, followed through four 
years of solemn and able services, the oath which he 
had sworn to save it, and sealed it with his blood. 



S '12 



